Slates of Zen
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Zen's scrapbook - containing random bits of memories Zen saw fit to keep and let shape him.
1. A letter to an underground brothel

**A/N:** Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, Section I (9,999-19,999 words) prompt #029 - a scrapbook of sorts (contains articles, letters, poems, etc. anything that a character can paste into a journal.

This first one refers to the brothel in chapter 1, and since he's a new guy they otherwise seem to know a lot about, he could have been referred from somewhere else. :D And if you've read Blank Slate and know the type of guy Zen is…that should explain the blood. If not, the comment at the end should.

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**Slates of Zen  
Page 1: A letter to an underground brothel**

[The beginning of this letter is missing, including the date and name of the addressed. What heads the letter, instead, is the frayed top, a smear of oil and ash and a few specks of blood.]

_I know someone if you're still looking. With commission, naturally. Attractive, though not necessarily sociable. Black hair, dark eyes – you know, that type. The poster feminine-looking boy who's enough to make any guy who gets a good look at him drool…until they get a load of his personality. A strong one, him. But the strong ones are better, as you've always said._

_This guy's strong alright. Not everyone likes him because of that, and I've never tried him myself. You know me; I'm as straight as a board when it comes to my rep, and can't do much else in this backwater. Your place on the other hand…there's quite a bit to be had under that dark veil of your little hideout._

_Now, this guy…he don't like following orders. He'll run the show himself or not have a show. But those are the sorts that last, aren't they. That business is a rough one after all. The docile ones crumble too easily. Trust me when I say this guy's got character. The amount of people who've chased after him…he makes more than one of my girls._

_They call him "Zen" – or he calls himself Zen and everyone just goes with it. Not sure which one of those, really, nor do I care. A name's worth shit in this world after all, and it's not a real name anyway, whoever chose it. But who cares, really? Giving the customers a good time for their buck – that's the business he's signed himself up for. Someone else's for now, but I know you can afford a better deal than that scumbag (and by that I mean a certain whoring flower of course). _

_And he'll be a good deal. Not a mark on his face – or his body, so I've heard. And he's a good time when he wants to be, when he's interested – and surely you've got more interesting people over there than this ol' town. It's enough to drive me up the wall, and all I came here for was some peace and quiet._

_But you're the one who's recruiting from this ol' place, so I'm giving you what I have. Slender, looks delicate – but this is a country pub. Ever hear of someone made from glass lasting here? Of course not. Why you're asking me, right? Unless it was just a passing comment I've leached on to. Not that it matters which. _

_And there's a lot more freedom 'round there. Here he looks like he's always watching his toes. A tiger in his cage. Much more fun when they're cut loose, right? And he smokes enough cigarettes to make me think he'll fit very nicely into the heavier smokes, if he could get to them. Your place is high on them after all – and everything else. The cathedral of the underground – and there are interesting rumours about this guy too. Trust me when I say he'll fight _right_ in there. Just don't ask me for my sources. The kind out here aren't as honour-loving as your lot – and the Devil knows what you did to make the world's loveliest criminals strip naked and offer their butts to you. Almost makes me wish I was a badder guy. Your place is a heaven. Too bad all I can do is drop by_

_Too bad, really. But at least take this guy of mine. I'd love to keep him around, but there ain't much fun he can show me here. But save him for me when I come. I want him to the fullest_

[The rest of the letter has been torn away, but on the page it's pasted, there's a note, written in deep red ink that's faded slightly with age:

"I only belong to myself. – Zen"

And an after-note, less dark and in the more innocent black:

"Good for a quick fix when I was bored. But done now."]


	2. A report on an interesting customer 1

**A/N:** This is also for chapter 1 – from the fortune-teller who received Russo's tale. Split in to several parts to keep the lengths about the same – more authentic as a scrapbook that way. :)

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**Slates of Zen  
Page 2: A report on an interesting customer Part 1**

[There is a letterhead at the top: a simple one that shows a white card with a black eye in its centrepiece. Underneath begins a handwritten scrawl in black ink, neat and clearly meant for further readings. There is a date and a name, and then a few lines below…]

_This will be a special report. For a special customer._

_Actually, I'm not sure I can call him a customer. We didn't exactly get to me divining anything. Or him paying me. He just sat on the chair opposing me and spilled his tale._

_And what a tale it was._

_He stumbled in, past the little boy who manned the till for me and on to the chair, bidding me to listen to his tale. Begging maybe. He might have been begging. Like a child._

_Part of that was why I indulged him. He was a sad image. Bleeding and near death, but seeking not help but an ear to hear his tale._

_He might have been better off finding a journalist somewhere who would turn his tale into an article. I'm sure many of them would have loved to hear about a bounty hunter…and about the criminal known as Zen he'd gotten mixed up with._

[There is a scrawl in fresher and less neat black ink here, between the above paragraph and the one below. Maybe it begins with an "I". Or maybe not. It's hard to tell. But what follows is relatively clear: "…controlled by NO ONE." The report takes no notice nor pause, continuing…]

_Coincidence, they'd probably call it. But everything was controlled by fate. Even Zen. The cards show me that: show me the fate that awaits him. He lives, so his future can be seen. The poor body they carried off that chair – his future was blackened out before he'd even walked through my doors._

_If he could have asked for a reading, I couldn't have given it to him. Except to tell him he would die. The Zen he spoke of however… I've never met him, and I don't think I ever will. But foresight can only take one so far. Maybe we will meet. Maybe we are fated to._

[There's another scrawl here in that fresh messy print, this time only a date, almost a year after the date printed in the top right corner of the page, under the letterhead. Once again, the report, or its writer, take no notice of it. The report simply goes on…]

_The cards I've laid out don't speak that far. They speak of the near future. Of sight and loss of sight. Of freedom and loss of freedom. Of identity and loss of identity – and that's the strongest message these cards have to give: that journey that's about to begin for this Zen: in losing and gaining his identity._

_And a crossroad is the final card. A choice: something that will set the path afterward in stone. Fate is fickle that way. Even she can see only so far ahead, decide things only so far ahead. A choice awaits. A choice he is perhaps not yet aware of…_

_But sometimes that is safer. Not to know. For then the choice he makes will be an honest one, uninfluenced. But we fortune-tellers aren't so kind. Mere foresight is not the right to meddle but we meddle. And by meddling we change their paths. Maybe so we can feel we've accomplished something. Maybe so we can simply inflate our egos. One has to wonder what the honest answer is…or, if there is even an honest answer to give._

_People who drew the cards of identity tended to be similar people. People with power. People with eyes trained on them, whether they knew it or not. People living a lie of themselves, a shadow of themselves._

_Zen, his name was. I wonder…what gave him a name of peace when I see a conflicted soul._


	3. A report on an interesting customer 2

**Slates of Zen  
Page 3: A report on an interesting customer Part 2**

[Over the page is more writing, in a similar manner. While the front had the official looking letterhead, this side had nothing save noting in ink. But the tale written continues from the front.]

_I expect I won't ever met this Zen, with that name or wearing any other name he chooses or someone chooses for him. That makes it difficult to divine, especially now that the one who brought that name to me is no longer in this world._

_And yet I'm still curious about him. The man who came to me described a free man, and yet I see one bound by many strings. This shadow I create through what the cards tell me is growing, and yet the person as a whole remains as mystifying as he ever was._

_One would wonder why it even matters. He is not my customer. Possibly, he will never be my customer and the man who was is dead. The stains he left on my chair will be a pain to get out as well. I wonder what the next person to sit on it will think. If they well spell the coppery scent in the air, or if the cleaning agents and paint and varnish will have done their job well enough. I wonder if they'll have a touch of post-cognition and sense the death that occurred there, or if they can see through the cover to the object's soul and the stain upon it._

_It's unlikely, but it's also a curiosity. It takes only one set of eyes after all, and yet what does it matter? Perhaps my customers will find it amusing, that there are people so desperate to have their fortunes told by my cards. And yet that is not the case. This was not a desperate man but a content one. A man content in his failure._

_Perhaps I should give him a little more thought. He is interesting too, but I confess he is bronze and he brought another of glittering gold to distract me. A mercenary on his own, he chose to chase that glittering jewel as well. And he dies having failed to grasp it. His only success is having kept it out of another's hands – by becoming the air the bullet flies through on its way to its target._

_He thought he'd made friends, companions, of Zen and Zen shot him without a second thought. A fatal shot too. The man dragged himself to me and died in this chair._

_Or near fatal. Perhaps if he'd dragged himself to a hospital instead he might have survived. But what good Samaritan hospital would treat a mercenary, I wonder?_

_Granted, what good Samaritan mercenary would know a mercery, I wonder?_

_Russo is, was, this man's name. Or, rather, it was the name he gave me. Perhaps it's the name he uses to hire out. Perhaps it's his real one. Or perhaps it's an alias with another cause – and the list of possible reasons could be endless so I won't bother entertaining that thought any further._

_ But what makes a man come to a fortune teller to tell a story she can ascertain from other devices while losing his life's blood. Though I wouldn't have received the names if I had. His name. The name of his quarry._

[Here, the word "quarry" is unitedly crossed out, and there is a note under it. "I am not a thing to be hunted", it says.

One must wonder why similar treatment was not given to the other metaphor on this page.]

_But still, he is just one customer of mine and they are both just two men in the world, and as interesting as their stories may be, as a fortune-teller I am privy to many a glorious thing. And I am frivolous. I confess it. Hence I dribble on my notes because something exciting will come along soon after and I will be swept up again. In a sense I am a young woman constantly in love, constantly drifting. Some new interesting customer will come – but blood is a hard thing to forget. I may forget the names Russo and Zen but that stain I'm sure I'll see time and time again._

_I am not the sort unnerved by blood though. Rather, it fascinates me in much the same way interesting customers do. It is a puzzle, and whenever I grace my fingers over the transparent stain I shall remember the man who died here and the man he'd spoke about and wonder about the two of them, and then forget again._

_Such is the way of life after all, and of business._

[The last few lines were scrunched, as though forced to fit. And a signature, barely legible in the bottom right corner, marking the end.]


End file.
